Mad Men, Season Seven, Episode Five: The One Where Don Has a Threesome

Did three incredibly memorable, arresting, potentially shocking things happen on _Mad Men _last night? Or did three fairly feeble, head-slapping, shark-jumping moments happen on Mad Men last night?

Isn’t it all in the pitch?

Let’s review the clips from Research.

(1.) Thanks to Megan and "Amy From Delaware"—named after her aunt, a Girls Gone Wild chyron—Don has finally had his first Mad Men threesome. But he was pretty reticent about it, and his initially grumpy _are you kidding here _face gave us hope that this would be funny, inventive, weird, or a _Mad Men-_ly subversive interpretation of the idea.

Honestly? That shit was corny. Don grouses all night in a plaid sport coat, then leaves the party, but still gets the girl. _Two _in, fact! First, they take turns kissing him. Girls then kiss each other. _Snickering! This is crayzeeeeLOL! Megan then de-Puccis in a single motion to show a wholesome underwear set. Aww, heart of gold, you guys. _Immediate cut to awkward, self-conscious rummaging for the Folger’s the next morning.

Megan slams countertops when Don gives it three stars on Yelp, even though that was a_ goddamn textbook threesome. _Where did she go wrong?! Where is the coffee? And why does her robe still smell like patchouli?!

The event was made more ridiculous by the walk up—the episode was studded with would-be same-sex dalliances and charged pairings meant to seem eerie. Ginsberg finds "Stan’s shoulders" attractive. Jim Cutler and Lou’s lips almost touch in the computer room, framed to look illicit and tryst-like. Megan and pregnant "niece" Stephanie give off majorly cozy vibes when they meet: "You’re hotter." "No _you’re _hotter!" "Wanna go in my bedroom, take off your dirty hippie rags, get naked, and wear my bathrobe?" "_Purrr. _But first let’s feed each other rare steak."

Anyway, if you’ve been hankering for Skinemax meets a funhouse mirror, you are welcome.

(2.) Don exhumed the grave of the_ New York Times _letter, and maybe. . . reneged? On one of the highest points in the show’s narrative history? Unless this is part of some greater plan, and we hold out hope that it is, what essentially happened is that Don tried his old Change The Conversation™ tricksies at a meeting with Phillip Morris. Only, he’s a little bit rusty. His pitch was all, "I could be sorry if you asked me to be sorry." What can he say? He’s a little less principled now, after the threesomes, etc etc.

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But Lou and Jim, lip-smacking computer lovers who are secretly gay for tobacco, were not pleased. Does this count as Don "going off script" with clients? Did he just lay the groundwork for an easy dissolution of his partner shares? Doesn’t that mean he’ll have no money to start the Dream Agency we keep hoping is just around the corner?! Or does he really think that being a cigarette shill all over again, looping us back to season one, is his ticket out of Peggy’s pretzel-bowl of sadness?

We absolutely thrill to _Mad Men’_s purest politicking and agency-centric intrigue—more than any other part of the show. And we have high hopes that Tobacco Plot, Part 638 is gonna turn out great. But let it be known: if we’re headed back to Christmas giggles with Lee Garner, Jr., demanding Santa’s elves all bend over and grab their ankles if they want their Luckys, then we might. . .

(3.) . . .holepunch our nipples off. Because Michael Ginsberg hacksawed his right areola, electively, and we had to look at the thing. It was _mauve. _And hairy, and streaked with pulpy blood bits, and also, completely disgusting.

Was it, as a viewing friend of your recapper put it, a "kind of brilliant culmination of all this dread and weirdness and unease that has been permeating the season"? Or was it a note too silly, and slightly narratively nonsensical—in a sentence we can’t believe we’re writing, even if he’d sawn off his ear to stanch the hum, it might have made more sense? (As is the nature of this form and with this show, someone soon will turn up a 1969 New York Post article proving the real-life veracity of the nippy storyline, and exculpating the show from excess absurdity. We’re sorry to say we do not have the stomach for those particular archive-search terms.)

The point is that Mad Men is no stranger to what you might call blackest camp. Lane Pryce, God rest, fumbles incessantly with the proper Jaguar tubings before giving up and just hanging himself; clear-eyed Kenny gets an eyepatch after Elmer Fuddian buffoonery in the woods; a rogue John Deere saws off some British appendages and Don’s concern is how Joan gets blood in her body-skimming dress.

Elsewhere: Betty finds out her credits didn’t transfer for her Florence study-abroad; Sally remains the perfect, whip-wielding kitten-child that Betty Draper, Henry Francis and Don Draper all completely deserve; Bobby Francis-Draper Part Three (what actor are we on again?) remains the absolutely most heartbreaking thing on the show, even more than Ginsberg’s fallen nip; and Lou can kind of draw!

Line of the Episode: "I’d like to say Peggy’s mentioned you at work, but she hasn’t." Michael Ginsberg, pre-nipple-butchery, to Peggy’s slightly doleful upstairs neighbor, Louis.

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